Newsletter

Comment piece by Camilla Cavendish, a journalist with a wealthy person’s name, so she should know! Bit of a neo-con piece, but the Times is in the Murdoch stable, after all! It remains true, however, that a lot of aid money disappears into overseas bank accounts long before it reaches the poor, as she argues.

Finance Minister Kudrin obtains the release of an ally, deputy mimister Storchak in the battle between Kremlin liberals and the silovki, according to the Washington Post.Moscow Times broadly agrees: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/600/42/371832.htm

Judge Ruz investigating and putting on trial a gang of robbers on Costa del Sol funding killings in Mauretania and Algeria. Gang was formed in prison Topas in Salamanca where much recruitment took place between 1999 and 2002. Leaders: Mohammed Achraf and Abdelhakim Fekkar. Lots of information in this piece and in general in el Pais. I will have to stop reading cambio16’s successor paper!

More from el Pais. Clearly the Spanis jihadist story is not cut and dried. Ministry of the Interior locking up lots of alleged jihadists, but here’s our controversial friend, Baltasar Garzon, the judge who wanted to prosecute Pinochet, letting them out again, if I read the Spanish correctly. Lots of names in this article.
CNN published an English version of this story the following day: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/10/21/spain.terror.arrests/index.html

Ive been avoiding posting news about this trial until I could find an American link. The issue of Turkey’s admission to the EU is too prominent in the EU to get a sensible article. Essentially, the Turkish prosecutors seem to be alleging that there was a group called Ergenekon who were similar to the Gladio network in Italy and other West European countries, using destabilasation tactics against the Islamist parties in the same way these tactics were used against Communist parties. The trial has a long way to go.
BBC story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7679158.stm

This is a piece about a particular brand, Jin Ling, manufactured by the Baltic Tobacco Company in Kaliningrad, allegedly from Brazilian tobacco sold it by BAT [British American Tobacco]. There is a link to a report by the Washington based group: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Interesting piece in el Pais. Security Force in Spain on maximum alert. They see Spain as a target and a transit camp for terrorists heading for Iraq and Afghanistan. Judge Baltazar Garzon is running an investigation into jihadist networks in Spain, which led to a major police operation last week. Al Kalaa [Fortress of the warriors] was the name of a base in Barcelona for preparing activists to go to Iraq. [please excuse any hiccups in translation here!]